


Texas Forever

by ishafel



Category: Friday Night Lights
Genre: Gen, Yuletide 2008
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-07
Updated: 2014-03-07
Packaged: 2018-01-14 21:19:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1279210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishafel/pseuds/ishafel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If you believe in something enough, sometimes you can make it happen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Texas Forever

**Author's Note:**

  * For [moosesal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/moosesal/gifts).



The Tim Rigginses of the world don't go to college. They get jobs at calculator plants, they get girls pregnant, they get married and live in doublewide trailers, and they drink themselves to death or drive into trees. Or if they go, they go to junior colleges, or big state universities on football scholarships they don't deserve, and they flame out quietly and disappear. They don't go to tiny liberal arts colleges on the East coast, play Division III football, and pull straight Cs. They don't graduate.

Tim doesn't do it because of Billy. It's great, this faith Billy has in him, that he can somehow be more than the sum of his heritage. Tim loves his brother, but he thinks sometimes that Billy is his own worst enemy. If Tim can do this, there's no real reason Billy can't. His brother can sell ice to Eskimos, if he wants to badly enough. He's stuck where he is because it's where he wants to be. It's a great fuck-you to Dad, too: that Tim's succeeded without his help, that Billy hasn't.

He does it for Street, for the flat dead look in Jay's eyes when they fought over Lyla. Jay didn't quite come out and say it, but they both know he's thinking it: that this is what he should have expected from someone like Tim: that this is what everyone warned him about. That Tim's trash, that he always has been, all the things that everyone said to his face until he grew six inches in the seventh grade were true all along. 

It's the best he can do. He isn't the athlete Street was, or Smash is; all he ever had was his size and his stubbornness. It took him further than he'd ever dreamed it would. But it wasn't enough for A&M or Texas State or any of the big schools. It isn't enough for the NFL. So he has a business degree, and soon he'll have a closet full of suits, and a job in an office. They don't look so hard at grades, not if you're reliable and hardworking. He's cut his hair, and he can fake the rest.

It'll take longer, this way, but that doesn't matter. It's not like anyone's waiting on him--not like anyone expects him to succeed. He's kept track of them, Jay and Lyla: they went to school on opposite sides of the country, and he doesn't think they're speaking to each other, and he knows they aren't speaking to him. But he knows where to find them. He knows that when he's ready, when everything is ready, he'll know what to say to bring them home. And if the words won't come, if they don't work--well, he knows how to kneel, and how to beg.

There is nothing he won't do to have them together, to have them--the three of them--back the way they were for that golden, stolen time. He needs money, and to get it he needs a job; he needed the education for that. He has the land earmarked already. Ten thousand acres of open country in east Texas, enough land for just about anything a man could dream of doing. They don't understand, the people he meets in the East. Not how anyone could need so much space, not that there could be so much space. 

But Tim remembers the firelight on Street's face, the shine of the sun on Lyla's hair, the sound of the river, the rush of the wind. He thinks that there's nothing else money could buy that would say I'm sorry so well. He thinks there's no price too high to have that back again. He loves them, and once they loved him, too. It seemed, then, like anything was possible. Tim's going to make it that way again.

He dreams about them, still, the way they were, the way they are: Street's ruined body, arms heavy with muscle and thin, wasted legs and Lyla, rounder, full, a woman instead of a girl. He dreams himself between them, although he never was. He had Jay, and later he had Lyla, but most often they had each other. He thinks, sometimes, that they were the only truly happy people he's ever seen. It's his fault they don't have that anymore, his fault Street's in California and Lyla's in Massachusetts, his fault that nothing they dreamed about has come true.

But he's going to make that up to them. He goes to an interview with a man who knows his name, asks if he wasn't All-American. Tim says he was, because it's true. He was a big fish in a little pond, and he had a damn good team backing him up. He doesn't say that. He says he gave everything he had out on the field, every game, and the man gives him an offer and a handshake then and there.

He owes a lot to football. He met Jason Street when they were Peewees; Street met Lyla because she was a varsity cheerleader. Jay saved him when they were kids and his parents took off, Lyla saved him when Jay got hurt, and football saved him when they both turned their backs on him and he didn't know what else to do but play. Now football's going to save all three of them. Football and this man he never saw before today, who watched him play once, and remembered him.

He's never been quite good enough: not smart enough, fast enough, clean enough, not suitable to be friends with decent people's children, not first string, not an appropriate boyfriend for a nice girl. But Jay didn't care, and Lyla didn't. They loved him despite himself, and maybe even because of himself. He fucked that up once, but if he can get it back--. This time he'll be better. This time he'll be perfect.

Texas is going home. Texas is the future. Texas is owning all the land he can see in every direction, the lazy trail of smoke from a campfire, cheap, cold, American beer, starlight so bright you can read by it. Texas is finally being a man other men respect. Texas is Street and Lyla, and he hopes that this time Texas will be forever.


End file.
